I Spoke With the Female Asylum Seekers Being Held in Prison. What They Told Me Is Haunting.

By
Rep. Pramila Jayapal

Jun 15, 2018

Karen Ducey +JASON REDMOND+AFP Getty Images

Last month, on May 7, the Trump administration announced a new “zero-tolerance” policy at our southern border, which has literally meant separating children from their parents.

Ripping children away from their parents has a particular shameful history, both in this country and around the world. Members of Congress like me, along with pediatricians and human rights groups, have formally demanded that this practice be immediately halted because of the trauma that it inflicts on children, which can scar them for the rest of their lives. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that the practice was a “serious violation” of the rights of the child.

But this horror continues and persists, and that is why I and seven of my colleagues, along with activists, engaged in civil disobedience of the Department of Homeland Security.

Tom Williams +CQ Roll Call + Alex WongGetty Images

Our action on Wednesday came five days after I spoke with 174 women who were, at the Administration’s orders, transferred thousands of miles from the Southern border to be held unjustly at a federal detention facility near Seattle. They are there, inside a prison meant for people who have had their day in court, because our country’s sprawling immigrant detention system is bursting at the seams under this out-of-control administration and its rogue deportation force.

What they told me about how they have been treated since their arrival has shocked and haunted me.

I demanded, and was provided, access to speak directly to these women—powerful women who have crossed rivers and even oceans to make it to the United States.

What they told me about how they have been treated since their arrival has shocked and haunted me:

“They took my son away.”

“I asked if we could say goodbye, and they said no.”

“My child kept asking for me.”

“They [Border Patrol] were the ones who took away my children.”

“[The Border Patrol] would yell and scream at you, like you weren’t a person.”

We must be clear: Donald Trump is lying when he conflates immigrants coming across the border with MS-13 gangs. These women are the survivors, not the perpetrators, of criminal violence in their home countries. The vast majority were seeking asylum but had not even been given a credible fear hearing, the required start to the asylum process.

The women came from 16 countries, as far as Eritrea and China, but the vast majority were from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Cuba. They talked of fleeing rape, murder and persecution. One woman had already lost her oldest child, shot and killed by gangs. Her second child was shot and paralyzed. She had taken her third child to try and bring him to safety, and yet upon arriving, was immediately separated from that child and has not seen him for over a month.

The women also spoke of being demeaned and humiliated by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents. They were called “filthy” and “disgusting” and were told they would never see their children again. They called the places they were detained by the nicknames “dog pound,” because they were kept in cages, and “ice box” because of the frigid temperatures. They had no blankets or mats in the icebox, and some women reported being without clean drinking water for days.

Every time they spoke about their children, they wept. The children were taken from them without even a chance to say goodbye. The vast majority of them still do not know where their children are, and not a single one had spoken to their child.

Every time they spoke about their children, they wept.

The United States, the home of the Statue of Liberty, was the one place where they were supposed to be treated with dignity and respect, with a fair process of credible fear hearings to assess their situations. They could have been processed with their children through the Family Case Management Program, a cost-effective and humane alternative to detention involving social workers. This program had a 99 percent success rate of participants attending court appearances and check-ins. According to staffers, the families in the program thrived.

But the Trump administration chose to shutter the program last year. Perhaps the Attorney General felt it was not cruel enough.

I keep seeing supporters of the president saying, “Well, they shouldn’t come illegally if they don’t want to be separated.” This is nonsense: Coming to a United States port of entry and asking for asylum, whether by yourself or with your children, is a well-recognized legal process under domestic and international law—not to mention in keeping with our country’s history of welcoming those in need of refuge.

I believe things would be very different if these women were not mostly poor and brown.

Individuals whose asylum claims have been accepted have gone on to become professors, soldiers in our military, artists and more. Instead, these women have been horribly mistreated since the day they arrived. All in our name.

Enough is enough. They must be released and reunited with their children.

Clockwise: The Federal Detention Center in SeaTac, Washington, where migrant women are being held; Maru Mora-Villalpando leads a protest and march outside the Federal Detention Center that Jayapal visited; Two boys look at the Federal Detention Center during the protests.

Karen DuceyGetty Images

I believe things would be very different if these women were not mostly poor and brown, and if they were not being kept out of sight in dark places where the media is not allowed. But just as we defeated the racist Muslim Ban, we are mobilizing across the country. As lifelong organizer, I know that strength emerges in times of crisis like this one. We know that the women and children are depending on the strength of our movements for justice.

I am doing everything I can to keep my promise and tell the world what is happening right here in our own cities and towns—from op-eds like this to risking arrest in civil disobedience protests. Even far from the border, immigrants are being held in our backyards. Every hour that goes by with family separation policies in effect is another hour that mothers weep thinking of their children, another hour that kids are fearfully wondering where their parents have been taken, another hour that trauma deepens.

“This isn’t the way we are supposed to treat asylum seekers. You are courageous and resilient.”

This is what I told the women as we stood in the common area of the detention center’s concrete prison pods, a stone’s throw away from Seattle’s glittering downtown. Let us do right by their courage and let us end family separation NOW.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal is a U.S. Representative for Washington's 7th District.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
ELLE participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.